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Page 1 of 4 Roger L. Martinez-Davila European Scholarship on Identity: Burckhardt, Greenblatt, Martin, and Ruggiero It is not until the end of the fourteenth century that new perspectives on identity found root in Spain. New notions of “who” was “who” had arrived, albeit, I argue Italians and other Europeans were behind in relationship to Spaniards. There is a growing consensus among early modern historians that there were fundamental shifts in social organization and personal identities during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In short, these social transformations were revolutionary because they shattered medieval religious identities (i.e. Jewish versus Christian), and replaced them with multilayered and overlapping categories (i.e. conversos, Jewish converts to Christianity). During his era, “group” identity constructions fractured into “individualized” identities. The nineteenth century historian, Jacob Burckhardt, who authored the influential text, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, initiated historians’ discussion of the issue of identity. He contended that early modern persons perceived themselves, unlike their medieval counterparts, as “spiritual individuals” distinctly separate from social groups. In one of his most poignant observations on the matter, he wrote: In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness—that which was turned within as that which was turned without—lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion and childish prepossessions, through which the world and history were seen clad in strange hues. Man was only conscious of himself as a member of a race, people, party, family, or

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Page 1: European Scholarship on Identity: Burckhardt, Greenblatt ... · European Scholarship on Identity: Burckhardt, Greenblatt, Martin, and Ruggiero It is not until the end of the fourteenth

Page 1 of 4

Roger L. Martinez-Davila

European Scholarship on Identity: Burckhardt, Greenblatt, Martin, and Ruggiero

It is not until the end of the fourteenth century that new perspectives on identity found

root in Spain. New notions of “who” was “who” had arrived, albeit, I argue Italians and

other Europeans were behind in relationship to Spaniards. There is a growing consensus

among early modern historians that there were fundamental shifts in social organization

and personal identities during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In short, these social

transformations were revolutionary because they shattered medieval religious identities

(i.e. Jewish versus Christian), and replaced them with multilayered and overlapping

categories (i.e. conversos, Jewish converts to Christianity). During his era, “group”

identity constructions fractured into “individualized” identities. The nineteenth century

historian, Jacob Burckhardt, who authored the influential text, The Civilization of the

Renaissance in Italy, initiated historians’ discussion of the issue of identity. He contended

that early modern persons perceived themselves, unlike their medieval counterparts, as

“spiritual individuals” distinctly separate from social groups. In one of his most poignant

observations on the matter, he wrote:

In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness—that which was turned

within as that which was turned without—lay dreaming or half awake beneath a

common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion and childish prepossessions,

through which the world and history were seen clad in strange hues. Man was

only conscious of himself as a member of a race, people, party, family, or

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corporation—only through some general category. In Italy this veil first melted

into air; an objective treatment and consideration of the state and of all the things

of this world became possible. The subjective side at the same time asserted itself

with corresponding emphasis; man became a spiritual individual, and recognized

himself as such.i

From Burckhardt’s observation that a subjective self arose from a morose corporate

community, it is comprehensible to perceive how persons create new forms of individual

perceptions. Stephen Greenblatt, author of Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to

Shakespeare, extends this argument and adds that the realm of the individual came to

fruition during the sixteenth century. He postulated, “There were selves and they could be

fashioned”.ii Greenblatt presents a compelling position that clarifies how the monotony of

medieval group identities, such as Christian or Jewish ones, could birth new individual

identities. Put simply, individuality created opportunities for great variability in identity.

Nonetheless, it would be inaccurate to suggest that the any member of a Castilian

converso family was by any means an “individual” as it is understood in this twenty-first

century. Rather, the idea of individuality was far more nuanced and unusual than one

might imagine. Greenblatt clarifies that these were not “expressive individuals”, but

rather persons that existed as “cultural artifacts” who were molded by social institutions.

In other words, persons were a direct byproduct of these convoluted events.

Another valuable intellectual who speaks to this issue is John Jeffries Martin and his

Myths of Renaissance Individualism. His text enhances our understanding of the multi-

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modal nature of early modern identities, argues that the Renaissance “self” was not a

“thing,” but a collection of relations between the internal and external experiences of the

individual. iii Early modern men and women viewed their identities as an array of

“possible permutations”—in essence, the self served as a flexible intermediary between

an individual’s interior and the social networks surrounding them.iv His neatly delineated

model proposes that Renaissance men and women understood the self as existing in five

forms—the socially conforming, prudential, performative, possessed, and the sincere self.

Martin asserts that some of these identities offered persons “at least an allusion of

control” over the self, whereas other identities either diluted the self into one of an

unwilling host, as in the case of the demonically possessed, or brought forth a precursor

of modernity, as demonstrated by the ethically enlightened sincere self.v Utilizing the

compounding lens of the late sixteenth-century thinker, Montaigne, Martin locates the

generation of the sincere self as an outcome of the Renaissance reconciliation of the

twelfth century notion of the Concordia of God and humanity, the Reformation’s concern

with sincerity but preoccupation with human sinfulness, and the new sense that men and

women as “agents” were responsible for their actions and assertions.

Lastly, consider Guido Ruggiero’s work, such as Machiavelli in Love, which explores

early modern sexuality identities in the context of broader social groups. For example, he

notes that a woman might hold more than one identity—that of a prostitute as well as an

honorable lady. In one context, a married woman of modest means who turned to

prostitution for financial sustenance was a whore, and other instances, the community

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might view her a good neighbor with honor.vi Ruggiero continues with his example of the

whore and lady, by adding:

The relativity of such socially shared ‘consensus identities’ explain much about

the apparently fluid nature of Renaissance identity and what has been labeled

Renaissance self-fashioning. In the end, as we shall see, there was perhaps less of

the later and more identity negotiation by individuals in dialogue with the various

social groups with which they lived, played, and worked.vii

Assembled together, this quadrumvirate of scholars artfully reconciles how the religious

and social tensions of the early modern period produced new forms of identities and

selves.

i Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 98. ii Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 1. iii Jeffries Martin, Myths of Renaissance Individualism, ix. iv Ibid., 15. v Ibid., 36. vi Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love, 21. vii Ibid., 21.

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